Story #56 Is A One-shot #3 Written At The X-Files Writer's Workshop In 15 Minutes.

Story #13 which is an Instagram post A FEW WORDS ABOUT WRITING AGAIN

Where do I get prompts from?

Everywhere. As simple as that. I never really look for them, they just happen to find me. There might be a word, a phrase, or a whole excerpt that hooks me up, and I want to channel it into words.

Here’s a list of prompts I’ve accumulated so far:

🦋“When you choose to collect experiences rather than things, you never run out of storage space” (a random meme from the internet while preparing a discussion about decluttering for my speaking club);

🦋“Imagine a world without sadness, loss, or suffering. No one is ever in a bad mood. Tears are unheard of. You never wake up at 3:00 a.m. riddled with worry or anxiety about the future. Lovers never leave each other. Loved ones never die.” (From the “Blink”);

🦋“I value privacy, maybe not secrecy, but I value privacy.” (From the interview);

🦋“Vic didn't dance, but not for the reasons that most men who don't dance give to themselves. He didn't dance simply because his wife liked to dance. She was insufferably silly when she danced. She made dancing embarrassing. (from “Deep waters” by Patricia Highsmith);

🦋 “Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don’t take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it’s as if all your best moments never happened. Parents are defined by their mistakes.” (From some other book. Hell, if I remember its title now);

🦋 “We tend to prefer the certainty of misery, rather than the misery of uncertainty.” (“Blink”);

🦋His promises were like… - by @ira.lutse.ielts;

🦋Sharing from your personal experience.

You see. Ideas are everywhere. Which one resonates with you most? Later next week, I want to start sharing them with you. We’ll start with #8. ✌️

Story #60 "Power in Routine"

POWER IN ROUTINE

That's me on this tee. With one slight difference - we are not in the X-files universe where the Fox (supposedly Mulder) cries out for Scully in every single episode. 

My version goes like that: 

‘Kids! KIDS! K-EE-D-S!’

At half past six every morning. 

And that’s how our day starts. 

Ten minutes to lie in, ten more to wash up and get dressed. Fifteen to have breakfast. We gotta leave at 7.20 for school 🏫 which gives me a sufficient amount of time to return home and start my first lesson at eight.

I usually work non-stop until 11 or 12, and then I have a very long lunch. I might exercise (you gotta move that body around after being glued to your chair for hours on end), and watch some tv-series along the way. 

In the second part of the day, there are two more trips to school and back, some more lessons, extracurricular activities, and dinner. By then, I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. 

My co-star app says that I find power in routine, and I couldn’t have said it better. 

Establishing a simple but flexible routine was my magic bullet to balance life and work and everything in between. Once I swallowed it, magic happened. Wonders haven’t seized since then.  

As a part of my daily routine, I might write, read, cook, knit, or take a nap. The list is endless, you name it. One rule applies, though - whatever it is, it has to be scheduled and put on the calendar, otherwise, chances are I won’t get it done. 

It’s all about planning. 

Here goes the main question: are you a planner or more of a spontaneous kind of person? What helps you have it done? 

Story #11 "Ignorance is no longer bliss."

I was nineteen when my father died. He was only fifty. An industrial accident that changed all our lives in the blink of an eye. It was a late summer Sunday afternoon when the doorbell rang. Two men were standing on the threshold holding a small black plastic bag. They were the bearers of the tragic news. I couldn’t believe what I heard until I opened that bag. There was my dad’s lunchbox, untouched. I remember looking at that plastic box, not being able to open it, thinking how it was even possible. He was supposed to eat that food.

Everything was fine! He left for work in the morning, packed his lunch, and a couple of hours later those people were standing at the doors of our flat saying that my father would never get back home again. The sight of that container in the plain black plastic bag broke me. I kept saying that that was not happening. That was not happening. That was not real. Only it was.

His death was of the utmost importance because he was my father. Someone I knew and cherished. Someone I’m going to remember and love till the end of my days. But there are so many other deaths around we hardly notice. Every. Single. Day.

How many wars can you recall in the last seventy years? I remember the American-Vietnam war, probably because it was widely popularized and countlessly screen-adapted. I’ve definitely heard about several armed conflicts in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Maybe some other places as well. I’ve no idea what was behind these conflicts, or what other parties were involved, or whether it escalated or not, or how many people died. Because these people are just blank faces in the crowd of other blank faces which have nothing to do with me. They’re faceless of the faceless. They don’t even seem real. They all live somewhere there. NOT here. Not close enough to be a problem for anyone apart from those who live and die there. They are out of sight and, therefore, out of mind.

It will not happen again. Donbas showed us that any war is real and cannot be considered trivial. There’s no small war. There is no war people can ignore. We all see now what happens when we act like it’s someone else’s problem. Once small and seemingly insignificant conflict, it escalated into the large-scale war. History repeats itself and once again gives us a lesson. Will we learn it now? I don’t know, but there is hope.

Everybody has to care. Everyone should think of consequences. We are not allowed to be blissfully ignorant anymore. Regardless of nationality, skin color, beliefs, etc., human life is priceless. Period.

Story #72, which is a 'Truly like lightning' review.

“The X-files” were my Bible throughout the 90s to 2000s. I fell in love with the character of Fox Mulder long before I fell in love for the first time for real. I didn’t think Duchovny could get any better than that until he started writing and I started reading what he had written. 

“Truly Like Lightning” is not David Duchovny’s first book, but it’s his best so far - it will strike you to the very core and leave you aching, with questions whirling like a snowstorm in the head. 

Set in the desert of Joshua Tree, the story centers around the former Hollywood stuntman Bronson Powers, now a converted Mormon living unplugged in a polygamous marriage. They raise their ten kids away from the evils of society until one day a young ambitious employee of a corrupt real estate company targets their land. Cultures clash. Faith is tested. Choices are made.

The book will hook you and won’t let you put it down… if you manage to push through the first fifty pages. Seriously, it took me two weeks to read that part, where Duchovny mostly explained the background of his characters, and only two days to finish the 445-page manuscript, when the story finally turned into an action movie-like narrative.  

All things considered, it’s worth every minute of reading. What made a successful man abandon all the perks of Hollywood and choose to live the life of an isolated nomad? What happens to Powers’ family once they are forced off their land and into the temptations of the world they left behind? What’s with the children who have never had a say in any of that? 

Read the book. And be prepared to be struck. 

Story #18, that is another CPE article.

The prompt: An international travel organization is publishing a book entitled Travel Changes Lives and has asked for contributions. You decide to submit an article about a travel experience that has changed your life. You should briefly describe the experience, explain what made it so special, and assess the significance of the changes in your life as a result.

****

I was stuck. Not in heavy traffic or at the airport waiting for a layover, but in my life. Suspended between maternity leave one and maternity leave two, with the mantra playing like a broken record in my head: cook, clean, feed, repeat. I swear a ten-hour redeye would be a mix of joyfulness and buoyancy in comparison. So, when my husband asked if I wanted to embark on a solo trip, and despite having barely traveled on my own before, let alone in the middle of winter, I was uplifted by the idea so much that I could fight tooth and nail for it if needed.

Italy was cheap and relatively easy. I whiled away my days eating (amen to Italian food), praying (to Italian gods of food, of course), and loving. I was more full up with love than ever. I learned to love myself again. I woke up so early that the stillness hung over unpeopled avenues and squares, and then strolled down the riddle of streets to a bustling quarter of the city, checking cafes and shops strewn everywhere where my eyes landed. It became my daily routine for three days. Better yet, three lovely days. I was so overjoyed with my newfound self that even a noisy couple in an adjoining room of the hotel, which walls apparently had been made of cardboard, didn’t bother me in the slightest. 

One might think there was nothing special about my getaway, but let me remind the readers about two toddlers left at home, basically tied to me 24/7, and no personal space left. So every minute of that trip was counted, stored away in the memory box, and treasured. I was a walking commercial screaming out loud “good memories are priceless; for everything else there’s Mastercard.” For once, I could put myself first and feel no guilt over my decision. 

Everything good comes to an end, and so did my holiday, which I do not regret in the slightest. Eventually, it was that trip that helped me if not cut, then at least loosen the umbilical cord connecting me to my offspring. The distractive overprotectiveness reframed itself into mentorship and friendship. The kids discovered the kindergarten, and I rediscovered myself as a professional. We still spend plenty of time together as a family but now everyone is given enough space to breathe and explore the world around us.

Story #42, CELTA weeks 5-6

These two were quite intensive, but after my second lesson, I seem to catch the flow and start enjoying the process.

Week 5.

✅Teaching practice started. Two 4-hour long sessions. Not the real practice though. Just a tiny part of it, where we designed a short “getting to know you” activity, observed our tutor and under her careful guidance planned our first lesson.

✅Another live session about phonology and pronunciation. One cool insight I took from that session: phonology is actually FUNology!

✅Assignment 2 was submitted.

✅Assignment 3 returned and resubmitted and now it's a pass.

✅3 more modules on the platform.

Week 6

Teaching for real.

✅ my first lesson was reading. No big deal (ha-ha), 16 students(😱), and your typical lead-in-prediction-pre-teach vocabulary-reading for gist-reading for details-follow-up productive skills task type of reading.

It was a blast. Seriously. The tutor gave me a few suggestions, but, all in all, she said it had been a success for the first lesson.

✅ my second lesson was grammar. The Present perfect vs the Past simple. I struggled with my timing, as the MFPA analysis took longer than I planned, and I felt like I had to give them all and everything in terms of Meaning, Form, Pronunciation, and Appropriacy. It wasn’t a failure, I got “to standard” for it, but looking back at it, I’d have changed a number of things. The most valuable advice from my Tutor was - prioritize.

✅ 3 more units on the platform

✅ started planning my assignment 1, which includes an interview with one of the students👌should be interesting!

Tomorrow I have a listening lesson. I’m well-prepared and pretty confident.

✅2/8 done. 6 more to go. 2 more with my pre-intermediate group, and then 4 more with Upper-Intermediate students.

Wish me luck ✌️🍾

In the photo, things I'm going to do right after I give my last lesson 😂

Story #79 "Mapping My Childhood"

That was a creative writing exercise from my tutor, and it's a mix of fiction and real-life events.

There was a heavy wooden bookcase in the living room of our old two-bedroom, creaky dusty shelves storing all kinds of books - detective stories, thrillers, romances that would make the most jagged reader blush. I rummaged through it from top to bottom and stopped my gaze on “Hatter’s Castle” by Archibald Cronin, a hefty volume of blue color - the book my younger self, fascinated with British and American literature – devoured whole in one week. Took me another week to digest it, before embarking on Dreiser’s “American Tragedy”.  We’ll get back to that.

Kesha, our green and yellow budgie, was tweeting in his cage as I stood there hypnotizing the book, trying to decide if it was worth a read. As I made up my mind to give it a shot, I sauntered over to the kitchen to boil some water for tea. Benny, our beautiful white mongrel, looked at me with her wet brown eyes – always seemingly sad – and I paused by the door of the kitchen with my manuscript.

Later.

We could look through Hatter’s castle later. Tea could wait too. It was time to walk.

“Hey, let’s go out for a while.”

She didn’t hesitate and jumped on me, pawing my knees excitedly.  I crouched down to be level with her lovely fluffy face and pulled her increments closer. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head, I had already known it would be one of our last times together. As I had known that one sunny day in June, I would forget to pull down the bar of Kesha’s cage while filling his bowl with fresh food, and he would fly away.

We tended to keep the balcony doors open in summer, but I still believed the chances he’d find his way out would be close to nil. Well, fucking stupid of me. But what would you expect from a fourteen-year-old – a clusterfuck of uncertainty and confusion? 

Fourth floor. Eighty-eight steps up and down. Every day for the past six years, and then the next ten. Inside it smelled like dump plaster and cigarette smoke. I used to know all my neighbors by name, the types of plants they had (they asked us to water them when on holiday), and the loudness of their spouses’ voices once a row was in full swing.

Every four weeks it was our turn to sweep the floors of the lobby and wash two flights of stairs. Twenty-two steps. Up and down. I wish we had a rug there, so I could sweep under it all the dirt and humiliation I felt every time I got spotted by a random passerby.

Checking the postbox was the thing I loved best. There were letters and postcards I could read. When I was in high school, newspapers joined them. Later, when I entered the college, catalogs and brochures were added to the pile of the mess our postbox had become.

“What you got there?” The boy from the top floor – the fifth – asked me as he stepped across the narrow two-by-two lobby to check the box of his own.

“Yves Rocher catalog,” I mumbled and he pivoted on his heels swiftly.

“What?”

“Yves Rocher catalog,” I repeated louder and then felt compelled to clarify. “You can buy a lipstick there or a mascara.”

The boy smirked and swept my body down with his eyes, grinning wickedly.

“You think it’ll help?”

At his words, my face started burning. I kept staring at him with eyes wide open, acutely aware that if I closed them for a second, the tears that had already filled the back of my throat would spill over my lashes. I swallowed a sob ready to escape any moment and brushed past the guy, bumping his shoulder painfully with my backpack.

“Fuck you.”

X-Files fic recs

I'm still a bit of a Tumblr newbie, but it's about time I posted some fic recs.

This is a small sample of recent favourites - there's SO much good stuff out there, by some hella talented writers ❤️

I know I've missed some - let's call it Part 1!

The Unseelie Court by @slippinmickeys

Epic case file, gripping and masterfully written. This one was like watching an episode live, back in 1990-something.

The Course of True Love by XFNessy

Another brilliant long-haul read with great character development (I'm in awe of how people plan and structure long fics like this!)

The Finer Things by @spookyshipperfics

This was such a fun (train) ride. The premise had me gripped and there were some really tense moments (I also like a bit of Diana angst!)

Just Friends by @spookyshipperfics

I had to add another by Spooky Shipper. A more light-hearted (and hilarious) piece about Skinner fretfully observing his agents at a party.

California Dreaming by @heresince93

Really nice, well-written AU piece. Scully, a pediatrician with a young daughter, literally collides with a handsome guy (who now?) on her morning jog.

Here's a Hand in Thine by @leiascully

Mulder invites Scully to the Lone Gunmen's New Year's Eve party. This was so entertaining and I loved the tension.

Gingersnap by @cecilysass

This is such an original, fun fic. Scully is in a cookie-baking frenzy and Mulder tries to help (and cause mischief). In the midst of a hilarious scenario they are both still so in character, and I love that.

Shut up, Mulder by David S

Thanks to @thatfragilecapricorn30 (via @unremarkablehouse) for posting about this one on Tumblr, or I never would have seen it.

A brilliant, and highly hilarious, stakeout romp as Scully gets impatient and Mulder struggles with car sex logistics.

The clouds are raining cacao and cocaine by @meriwetherwrites

I need to read more Krycek fics. This was equal parts funny and hot. Mulder and Krycek investigate a small town where the inhabitants have seemingly lost their inhibitions. Need I say more.

----------

If I've incorrectly deduced you're not Tumblr - or I've tagged you incorrectly - please yell at me!

Story #65 is something to be said about bones.

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

Said Henry David Thoreau probably talking about finding your vocation and yada-yada-yada. Sitting in a wooden gazebo of my mother’s country house and looking at our twelve-year-old orange ball of a Pomeranian gnawing at a raw steak bone makes that quote a bit of a joke.

What does it take to know your own bone? How do you even know if that fucking thing is your true bone? Damn right. This is where you had to start, dear Mr. Thoreau.

I wanted to be a forensic pathologist. No, seriously. I thought I was going to cut skin and muscles and all. Literally. I would slice and dice and get to the very essence of a bone.

A human’s body is a temple, so often vandalized and violated by a few who believe they’re omnipotent - criminal offenders, abusers, perpetrators - doesn't really matter what you call them. By unraveling the mysteries of the body's destruction and gathering all the clues it left behind, I’d solve the puzzle and bring the body its dignity back. Restore it. Make it whole again. Make it more than just a set of bones.

I never became a queen of an autopsy bay. Somewhere along the way, I took another turn to explore my other obsessions. The writing was one of them, and this time it’s all down my bones.

The thing is, I didn’t recognize my bone when I first saw it. Sometimes it takes years to find it. It may take a few more to understand that it, indeed, is your true bone. However, one thing Mr. Thoreau was right about is, whatever your bone turns out to be, once you find it – gnaw at it. Gnaw at it with all your might. 

Story #70 is a message to the mothers of boys.

To the mothers of boys

I am a mother of a wonderful boy of six years. I often hear people, husband included, referring to our son as a mummy’s boy, a term I find derogatory. “You are too gentle to him,” “You are raising a wuss,” “Don’t kiss him. Don’t hug him. Don’t hold hands. Take your pick.

Friends, relatives, and even strangers dare to point their fingers at the fact that my son and I nurture a close bond as if it is something filthy. For reasons which elude me, mother-son closeness is severely stigmatized in our society. 

You encourage your son to try a new hobby and people say you’re meddling with him. You let him cry on your shoulder when he scraped his knee and they say you’re coddling him. You buy him a long-wanted toy and they say you are smothering him. A mother that keeps her son “too close” feminizes him and discourages the development of his manhood. In the world of masculinity, a big macho man is a poster child for success, yet a man who is able to express his feelings freely and be susceptible to the emotions of others is a loser.

This is simply not true. No one is ever going to become oversensitive and maladjusted from being loved and treated with care. Contrary to popular belief, boys who don’t suppress their emotions won’t become clingy wimps hiding under their mother’s skirt – they will turn out to be better equipped to navigate their lives and be empathetic spouses. 

Love won’t hurt. It will heal. So I'm just going to hug my son some more and tell him how much I love him.

Are you a mother of a boy? Maybe you should do the same then.